Day 955, January 23, 2023

-

Year of the Rabbit

As the snow falls, 
the memory of younger selves, 
like a broken and bruised banana, 
the salvaged detritus of previous jobs, 
a yellowed piece of plastic.

Everyone waits in line, 
everyone celebrates differently, 
everyone lingers suspiciously on faces they don’t know. 
At the end of the line is pizza. 
At the end of the line are chopsticks and fortune cookies. 
The volunteers ladling small portions have name tags that say, 
Volunteer.

I cannot fathom murder. 
I cannot fathom the end of life. 
The instant appearance or disappearance 
is enough to inspire me to take up religion, 
again. 
What do you say to someone who has lost an aunt, 
a mother, a sister, a dance partner? 
Is it enough to listen?

In the year of the rabbit, 
none of the victims were below the age of 50. 
The DJ was playing a Light Rain in March. 
It was not yet February. 
Here there is quietness. 

Stillness. 

Ash in a cold stove. 
A frozen bottle of water left in the car overnight. 
Squirrel footprints in the snow. 
The sugar on a gum drop. 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 1003, March 13, 2023

-
Image
A little more than a thousand days… I have been thinking about how memories do not become stories until you write them down, or perhaps recite them over dinner and a drink, or sing them in song. Until then, they are just temporal wisps of existence, like the day before yesterday, or the meal you shared ten years ago at the restaurant where you still always order the same thing.The peanut noodle salad sprinkled liberally with scallions and undercooked broccoli. It would be just a meal if not for the retelling and revisiting.  I missed the 1000th day, choosing instead to celebrate the birth of two of my children (twins), and then after over filling myself with bulgogi, pajun, and bibimbap, settled into dozing off in front of the television.  I remember becoming a father like those stories you read about where mothers pick up small cars to save children pinned underneath (there is nothing written about what kind of negligence caused a child to be pinned under a small automobile). The kids
Read more

Day 999, March 9, 2023

-
Image
Look to the Stars There is still the beating heart.  The weary day is not so terrible,  it is just soft and pliant  like the sugar wrapped around a big industrial sized taffy machine.  Sometimes it is hard to tell what will make one  day worth more than another.  A few minutes of imagining an old lady  in a nursing home  meeting her lover for breakfast in the cafeteria.  Producing something that did not exist before.  A chicken’s morning nonchalance.  The scallion stems sitting in a jar of water.  Even with the evidence,  it is all too easy to forget and treat the day  as a thing dreary  and consumed like a bowl of raw sunflower seeds.  A vocal coach will hold sessions with the stars  in their hotel room.  Someone to remind one how incredible this life is.  All your life  you have dreamed of this moment.  And now you are here.  Sometimes we forget that. 
Read more

Day 998, March 8, 2023

-
Image
 Simile Sometimes there is quiet for many days,  there is no more room in the voicemail,  the fortune cookies remain uneaten,  the ears chirp with fields of crickets.  A dog is licking his bone,  occasionally jawing the hock,  but mostly licking.  The fire is an even glow,  not too hot, not too cold,  it is like the log has turned to charcoal  and there is a nice even burning,  proper and genteel flames,  not reckless and unruly  like in the morning with the vent open.  Some days it feels like someone  has served a large plate of banana pudding  and I do not like banana pudding  or damp vanilla wafers  and so the day becomes like riding an escalator  when you have a headache.  A long escalator,  like in the subway in DC.  The stop near the zoo and the conference hotel.  It is a terrible thing to have the stomach flu  while staying in a hostel.  When the kids were little  and we went on a whale watching trip,  but the seas were rough on the way back,  and I had never been seasick before
Read more